Bernie fighting on sadly reminds me of The Black Knight scene in the Holy Grail, https://youtu.be/mjEcj8KpuJw?t=1m39s (your welcome).
First off, congratulations to Secretary Clinton, I am sure she will make a good president and my quarrel with the former Secretary of State was never with her ends but with her means. I, like many are wary of how much of her DNA is Eleanor Roosevelt and how much is Frank Underwood. But the groundbreaking mile stone of shattering the White House glass ceiling is absolutely breathtaking.
Breast cancer research, shutting down challenges to the right to an abortion, pay equity, combating sexual assault, helping the underprivileged with birth control are just a few of the issues I am looking forward to our country placing at the forefront of our agenda.
Let me officially endorse Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as Hillary’s running mate. My fellow Bernie mates are ANGRY! Sec. Clinton needs to accept this gift of new registrants and voters to her left as she will race to the middle in the general election vs. Trump. You know she will, the Clintons #1 rule in their playbook is mollify the left in the primaries and embrace the middle in the general. They have always adhered to this dictum and they always will. Thus the only way to recruit as many Bernie bros (and sis’s)as possible is to run with Sen. Warren. We Know because of Bernie’s age, insolence and political background coupled with Warren’s signaling that she is willing to be Hillary’s attack dog on Donald Trump, the Massachusetts Senator is the logical choice. Forget about ticket balancing, 2016 is a paradigm shift in political thinking. By having 2 women on the ticket (as Nancy Pelosi so aptly put it, we’ve had 2 men on the ticket for hundreds of years) combined with Warren’s exuberance, this is the right formula for shaking up Clinton’s stodgy, anachronistic persona.
Nobody foresaw the ascent of Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders. The Republicans allowed themselves to be seduced by a NY billionaire who is the antithesis of their purported Christian, family values and has never been a friend of Wall Street, the 2 areas the GOP holds most dear. Concurrently a large number of Democrats supported a cantankerous septuagenarian who until recently wasn’t even a member of their own party. They did so because the issues he espoused on income inequality, climate change, campaign finance and educational opportunity transcended their vision of an exemplar candidate. Clearly we underestimated the intelligence of the Democratic voter and the stupidity of the Republican voter.
As many have noted Bernie was successful in moving the politically peripatetic Clinton to the left on key issues of income inequality, campaign finance reform (his revolutionary method of reinventing fundraising may be the single most brilliant tactic in modern campaign history), climate change and single payer health care and was nothing short of patriotic strategery (thank you Colbert).
In fact if a couple of moves by Bernie were slightly altered I am convinced we would be calling Senator Sanders the presumptive nominee.
On November 19th of last year Bernie gave a speech on what it means to be a Democratic Socialist reminiscent of Obama’s speech on race and Kennedy’s speech on what it means to be a Catholic. He missed an important opportunity. To make voters feel at ease with his unorthodox nomenclature it’s about numbers. If the subject was religion it would be about beliefs, if race about similarities. With Democratic Socialism it’s all about numbers. Bernie should have identified how much each of his proposed programs would cost, where he was going to get the revenue from and how much it would cost the taxpayer. If the voter saw the benefits of a program at not too high of a price Sanders could have set many volatile voters at ease and he would have gleaned a precipitous amount of support, just enough to win a few more primaries. In a 1 on 1 with Clinton it could have made the difference.
Another factor that could have helped Bernie was the fact that except for once in a debate where he exclaimed “there is only one person on this stage who ran against President Obama” he allowed Secretary Clinton to claim the mantle as Obama’s successor. Hillary DID run against Obama in a vicious feud back in 2008 and basically broke with him on Iran and many other policies as soon as she left the White House. If ever there was a sprit successor to “Yes We Can” it’s Bernie’s slogan “A Future to Believe In” complete with a fresh crop of idealistic young people (young in mind or body). Yet Bernie never called her on it, even when she proselytized being in lockstep with Obama when in fact Sanders was more in agreement on policy and philosophy. Maybe the first White House meeting between Sanders and Obama included an admonishment from the President that as long as you don’t try to wrap my administration into your campaign I will remain neutral. But doesn’t it beg curiosity as to why Obama chose to stay neutral between a democratic socialist US Senator who just months before joined Obama’s party and the President’s number 2 pick in his nascent administration? I mean if Biden chose to run wouldn’t you expect Obama to endorse his #1 immediately? Another golden opportunity frittered away by Sanders.
Finally I felt Bernie stuck with income inequality as his sole message a little too long. He eventually emphasized campaign finance reform, climate change and others but for a long time he was perceived as a Johnny-one-note and voters like to be entertained. The fact that Bernie hammered home the same message was very effective especially when your name recognition and serious contender quotient was originally next to zero but when the crowd starts mouthing your speeches the interest factor has a short half- life.
Now is the time to rally around our presumptive nominee. The discord must cease immediately in order to capitalize on the train wreck happening with the GOP. It would give our party an important boost to start the general election and deny Donald Trump from erecting a golden “T” on the Trump White House gate.